George Pitcher is an Anglican priest who serves his ministry at St Bride's, Fleet Street, in London – the "journalists' church".

Gay bishop threatens to upstage gays

The Rt Rev Gene Robinson, the openly gay Bishop of New Hampshire, is a cause celebre for those who believe that the time has come for the Anglican Communion to embrace and to proclaim its homosexual clergy.

Bishop GeneÂ said that he had always wanted to be a 'June bride'

But Bishop Gene needs to be careful that his cause doesn't become a circus, surrounded with burly bodyguards, when the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference is convened at Canterbury in July.

He has already made it known that he intends to "marry" his long-term partner of 20 years, Mark Andrew, next month. Nothing wrong with that and we wish them well. But the timing of the civil union, just ahead of the Archbishop of Canterbury chairing a Lambeth Conference that could see the Anglican schism over issues of sexuality made formal, looks deliberately inflammatory, whatever Bishop Gene might say about protecting the financial security of Mr Andrew.

Bishop Gene further indicated that he might be playing to the gallery when he announced that he had always wanted to be a "June bride".

He now talks openly of death threats that he has received for his stand and the minders that he is going to need when he gatecrashes the Lambeth Conference (Archbishop Rowan Williams has not invited him in a bid to cool the temperature).

If Bishop Gene needs security from those who would do him injury for his sexuality, then that is a very sad state of affairs for the worldwide Anglican Communion and for our society as a whole. But, again, one wonders whether Bishop Gene needs to talk of his need for bodyguards just now.

As the Most Rev John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, has demonstrated over the past couple of years, attracting undue media coverage through stunts tends to attract attention to the man rather than to the issue in which he is engaged. Bishop Gene is in danger of following suit.

I have every sympathy for him, his partner and his cause. But the issue of the silent oppression of clergy for their sexuality is too important to become a story about one person and his circumstances.

Bishop Gene is in danger of making it so and I hope, ahead of the Lambeth Conference at Canterbury, that he will find the humility to recognise that the story is not about him and his partner, but about the Anglican Communion and the integrity of its witness in the world.

If he does, then the presence of him and his partner in Britain this summer is very welcome and can only serve to enhance the case for liberating those who so disgracefully have had to hide their true sexual identities for so long in the Anglican Church.